I Promise

I will blog again soon!

Once I catch my breath!

The holiday season is always super busy for photographers. It's like our tax season for accountants.

So, once I design and print all the cards and albums, edit all of the sessions, take the rest of the photos, I'll bombard with a ton of posts. I'm booked until December 17th, and hope I can squeeze in a few posts between then.

In the meantime, back to work I go.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!

I Helped

Deliver a beautiful baby boy today!!

It was the most humbling and beautiful experience ever and I loved it. Also very exhausting. I took a 30 minute nap at home today when it was over, but I've been up 39 hours straight otherwise.

Can I pull a Rip Van Winkle?

Thanksgiving Thankfuls and Misc.

No pictures this post because I'm currently noise filtering a wedding and I don't want to slow it down too much. However, with one wedding, one family and four mini holiday sessions down and only two engagements and a family session to go, the light at the end of the tunnel is near. Or, at least until next weekend when it all starts back again. But the exciting thing is that I have a weekend off! So, in between spending time with my family, working in the yard and working on the business end, I'll (fingers crossed) be able to post some photos.

We've gotten the house mostly unpacked and I've gotten into a bit of a routine with everything. Things are settling in and it's nice.

Sunday we have church. That's a most of the day thing. I tried to keep it Sabbath and not work, but I'm so busy right now that I have to work a little bit.

Mondays I'm at home with the kids. Usual fare, diapers, potty breaks, doggie potty breaks, food, cooking, laundry, nap times, walks, etc. In the evenings are prayer meeting and choir practice. Once every two months my husband and I teach Monday School, so we need to be at church at 6. The other Mondays it's not til 7. And choir practice gets out at about 10.

Tuesdays it's the same day-to-day stuff. An errand here or there. Church in the evening, so we start getting ready at 3, eat dinner the second my husband comes home and off to church we go until about 10.

Wednesdays my MIL comes in for an hour in the afternoon so I can get some work done. Then it's pack the dog and the kids up in the van to drive to town for obedience classes. Fitzgerald does really well in class. My kids, however, not so much. They'll last about half an hour before getting antsy. But, we want to make it a family affair and get them used to the training aspect so when they're big enough they can tell him what to do when they start playing together.

Thursdays depend on the week it is. Sometimes my husband has musician's practice. Sometimes he's being assistant youth pastor to the guys. Sometimes I'm being assistant youth pastor's wife to the girls. Sometimes we have a night off - those nights I get work done.

Fridays, again, depend. Sometimes we have youth service. Sometimes we have a ministry function. Sometimes we have a church function. Sometimes I'm shooting a wedding. If we're not doing any of those, I'm working.

Saturdays, we go to the church and pray for the outreach team that is going into the community to bless others. We give away care packages. We don't knock people upside the head with Bibles. We don't stand on corners and preach. We just show others we care. After that I typically have some sort of shoot. Wedding, family, kids, engagements, what have you.

But, I am so blessed to have so much to do! I couldn't imagine feeling imprisoned and not getting to be involved. And my kids get to grow up serving as a lot of our lives revolve around church. We are gladly servants of the Lord and we're instilling that mindset in our kids. We were browsing through the toy section of a store one day and Auds asked for a toy. When I told her that we weren't buying it ("You are such a blessed little girl and have a dolly just like that at home.") and that it was for someone else, she said "It's a blessing for another girl. She'll like it." Aw.

Tonight she was singing a song in the back seat that I'm guessing she learned in Sunday School. It was too cute to hear her sing "Yes, I've got the Holy Ghost. Holy Ghost. Holy Ghost. Yes, I've got the Holy Ghost. It's Jesus living in me." Melted my heart.

Anyway, we're doing our month of Thanksgiving and writing something new each day just like we did last year. We don't have the big banisters to hang them from, so I'm stringing them across our bookshelf armoire in the living room.

Our first day was Jesus.

Today was water baptism and the Holy Ghost. Today is also my spiritual birthday. I'm six years old today. My husband bought me sushi. Life is good. :)

Pumpkin Patch

So, when you have a new house, a new puppy, photos to edit, save the dates to design, photo shoots to actually do, two kids who aren't feeling well, boxes to unpack and a studio to decorate the most logical thing to do is take the kids to the pumpkin patch, right? Right!

I'm all about experiences. I would rather give my kids fun experiences (like going to the pumpkin patch) than buy them all the toys in the world. We got there about half an hour before it closed for the evening, which was plenty of time to find our pumpkins and take a few photos. I may have spent so much on pumpkins that they decided to stop counting. Ha!

I had a reason: our front porch has these two large urns that were just crying to have some short and stout pumpkins lying on top (white ones with orange veins, of course) with some rustic looking tall skinny ones standing in front. And then Auds had to pick out little pumpkins for everyone in the family. So we got 4 huge pumpkins and 4 baby pumpkins.

I'll try to take a picture of the pumpkins out front tomorrow, but it's cute. I'm a little giddy. We had a great time tonight. If I weren't so busy on the weekends, we'd go then because they do hayrides and face paintings and games and all sorts of stuff.

But I needed a nice relaxing evening. The kids have both had coughs for about two weeks now so I took them to the doctor this morning. Typically I don't go to the doctor except for well visits, but a lingering cough deserved a check. The culprit? Severe drainage due to insane allergies. At least it wasn't anything serious. But, I cancelled a major photo shoot this afternoon while I was on my way to the doctor just in case - I didn't want to spread any germs.

Then it was a typical two-year-old-living-here day. Auds hit the dog in the head with a curtain rod that hasn't made its way up yet. Then she got caramel all over the table and refused to eat her pickles. She wouldn't let Tony go down for his nap so he was cranky and fussy. Then she got so tired she had an accident. And I'm talking an accident. It was the Hoover Dam of accidents. Soaked herself, her clothes, the couch, HER HAIR. This required a bath.

While I was bathing her, the dog pooped in the living room and then ate it - in like 30 seconds. I smelled it happening and ran out there to find him eating it. So I had to clean the remnants and the dog - with a toddler in the tub who decided to get out, run around naked and wake her brother (who just went to sleep 30 minutes ago) up. Add to that my husband worked late and it was just peachy. Life is getting back to normal. ;)

So, all of that to say that I needed to spend some quality time with my precious little family and make some positive memories. I think we accomplished that.

Look at this beautiful girl. I can never stay mad at her.

The "Mommy" pumpkin and the "Audrey" pumpkin.

Steering the wagon.

Climbing on the pumpkins.

Checking out the petting zoo. Yes, a petting zoo with a sign "CAUTION: ANIMALS WILL BITE." How much sense does that make?

Auds getting out of the wagon. You can see a couple of my big ones there. Let's call them Bertha and Maude.

There's no pictures of little man coz he was here with me.

Happy National Babywearing Week!

My perfect little family. :)

I'm Alive!

My house(s) are covered in boxes and things are here there and everywhere. I've got two kids with fevers, one screaming right now (her daddy's tending to her, I'm not neglectful). I'll be spending the rest of the night packing coz the big and final move is Wednesday. 25.15 hours from now. That's how long I have to get this place livable-ish for the next person.

But, I just wanted to say that I'm alive.

These past few weeks have been wrapped up in packing, packing, packing and, uh, more packing. Taking a trip to the zoo coz to get away from the boxes. The kids accompanying me on an engagement shoot and an al fresco lunch of maque choux there. Making slides out of the boxes. Play dates to get away from said boxes. Birthday parties, church activities, and general all around craziness. In addition to slowly moving things over to the new house. Not to mention the fact that my husband is working at the firm like crazy and I've been booked since the end of August and this train ain't stopping until December.

I have pictures on my iphone of all of these and will upload when things calm down. That'll happen soon, right? Please tell me that'll happen soon? Oh, and tell me that the dust bunnies will move out on their own and the resident country spiders will move their webs from my windows (the tops of which are a good few feet above my head... I'm not that lousy of a housekeeper) before I move.

What's that? No, they won't. Well, that's no fun.

Our Pup

Well, the black lab that I was initially interested in adopting likes to chase cats, and since we have two Katrina babies, that wouldn't be such a good mix. I can picture it now:

"Mommy! Desi is eating Cheeto!"

Explain that to a toddler.

So, I asked for recommendations from the rescue society and gave them some information on us. Well, they recommended this little (big) guy:

Say "hello" to Fitzgerald Fitzwilliam. Named after F. Scot Fitzgerald and Fitzwilliam Darcy. We're so literary. We'll call him Fitz for short.

I was supposed to go meet him the end of the month, but due to scheduling conflicts (I took on another family photo shoot) it wouldn't work out. I had a cancellation this morning (the dad got stuck at work out of state and couldn't make it back in time) so we made an impromptu appointment to see him.

It was love at first bark. He is such a sweet puppy and a goofy gentle giant. He was a puppy - running all over the place and acting spastic - but was very, very gentle with the kids.

There he is holding hands with Auds. She did get a little overwhelmed just because it was a new place, a new dog running around and there was another two year old there (that explains the extra arm in the picture) to play with. But, she's been talking about him ever since.

We're gonna be filling out the adoption paperwork and all soon and will be bringing him home after we close on our house. And we're closing in less than three weeks! Eeeek!

I Am Insane

So in addition to buying and moving to a new home, we've decided we're gonna adopt a dog. I'm nuts. But after Tuesday's incident, we decided that after we move we're gonna get a guard dog to let us know if something is going on outside.

We found a beautiful black lab who was rescued and is very mild tempered and patient with kids. I'm hoping her foster mom will hold her for us until November, after we move and get unpacked and settled in and whatnot.

So, now we need to pick a name. Eurydice, Desdemona, Eliza Doglittle and Ouiser are the top contenders.